Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1965. 1971: Escaped to Italy via Yugoslavia, then traveled to Germany. Political asylum. Trojanov went to school in Kenya in 1972–77. 1978–81: Learned German in Germany and attended the German school in Kenya. 1984: Graduated from high school and lived in Paris for a while. Began working as a journalist. 1984–89: Studied law, ethnology, and (in his own words) "disaster" in Munich; traveled in Africa. 1989: Ilija Trojanov founded the publishing house Marino Verlag for books from and about Africa. In 1997 he developed the "Novel in Progress" internet project together with the ZDF broadcasting station. After some years in Bombay, he moved to South Africa in 2003. He works mainly as a journalist and has translated several books into German.

In addition to scholarships from Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf and the German Literature Fund, Ilija Trojanov received several other awards: The Bertelsmann Literature Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in 1995; the Marburg Literature Prize in 1996; the Viktor von Scheffel Prize and the Thomas Valentin Prize of the city of Lippstadt in 1997. For his novel Der Weltensammler he received the Leipzig Book Prize and the Berlin Literature Prize in 2006. In 2007 he was the Town Writer of Mainz. In 2009 he received the Literaturhäuser Prize.